The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship?

Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade

In the film ‘The Maltese Falcon,’ the fictional detective and protagonist, Sam Spade, is given a problem to solve. Spade spends the entire film discovering the real problem.

Being a good product designer is often like that (though rarely do we discover our client is a murderer).

In his well-known and highly influential book, ‘The Design of Everyday Things,’ the eminent Don Norman reminds us that a core competency in design is discovering which problem to solve.

Engineers and businesspeople are trained to solve problems. Designers are trained to discover the real problems. A brilliant solution to the wrong problem can be worse than no solution at all: solve the correct problem.

~ Don Norman, ‘The Design of Everyday Things,’ (Basic Books, ©2013)

So sometimes creativity is not just creating, it’s knowing what to create. I make this point because, conversely, sometimes creativity just happens — stream of thought. And because purists in the creative field abound. A good friend of mine refuses to countenance a creative workflow that encompasses AI in any way.

And let’s face it, he and all the other purists absolutely have a case. Were the artists whose work got ingested by the AI industry consulted beforehand? Absolutely not. The ethical and legal implications are many and serious. As I write, some have suggested that the entirety of the American public be compensated by the AI industry on an annual basis the way Alaskans are by the oil industry.

But all that is a different conversation. AI as it pertains to art is not what I’m here to talk about. I am here to talk about AI as it pertains to the design of digital products sold for profit. This is absolutely one of those times that creativity involves knowing what to create.

So for this first post, I start my new blog with a personal observation I’ve made in my journey of self-education on AI. In practical effect, AI answers the question “what if I were able to bring a near totality of collected human wisdom to bear on a given question that needs answering?” I know, I know, the Web already does that. But AI answers a second, follow-up question: “What if I could bring that wisdom to bear in the most convenient and intuitive way possible?”

As part of a recent design effort, I had a few really complex questions I needed answers to. I could have gotten such answers myself if I had sat down in front of Google for a few days with a notepad and a couple gallons of coffee. All AI did was make that process go much, much faster.

So, if we can accept that answering complex questions is often a necesary step in discovering root problems, then we can accept that AI has a role in design, and an important one.

Right now we’re in a world where AI can help with design in narrow capacities like the one I’ve described. But how far are we from a world where AI can truly become the detective all good designers need to be, especially according to the illustrious Mr. Norman? Someone who can truly look at your business, your users, the capabilities you offer, the opportunities, as well as the constraints involved — including the personal, political, and practical — and then sit down and hypothesize as to the nature of the problem as well as potential solutions? All while navigating and balancing human relationships, organizational culture, unspoken agendas, and occasionally fragile egos?

My honest answer is I’m not qualified to answer that question from a technical standpoint.

But I haven’t seen it yet.

Not even close.

So to the fearful among my fellow designers I say this: don’t think of it as “Artificial Intelligence,” think of it more as “Aggregated Intelligence.” If the folks at Claude or ChatGPT had succeeded in creating a mind that can do what yours does, they wouldn’t have to keep building new models. The models would be building themselves.

And I’d say that the same impulse that led you to avoid becoming a “design monkey” and instead embrace your inner detective, your inner Sam Spade, that impulse will keep you more than relevant in a playing field increasingly populated by approximated minds.

Here’s looking at you, kid.